


a time to mend

by someitems



Category: The Repair Shop (UK TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Clocks, Gen, objects in mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28036278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someitems/pseuds/someitems
Summary: When Will Kirk and Steve Fletcher are asked to repair an old woman's grandfather clock that belonged to her late husband, they believe they have a straightforward job on their hands. But when the clock refuses to wind, they're forced to conclude that there's more here than meets the eye...
Comments: 18
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	a time to mend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalirush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalirush/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, kalirush! The Repair Shop has been such a huge source of joy for me this year as well, and it was fun to write a story set in that calm, warmhearted world. Thanks for giving me the prompt, and I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Content note: although it's dealt with very gently and not talked about in great detail, this fic does contain mentions of the loss of a loved one and of mourning. 
> 
> Thanks to [redacted] for getting me into The Repair Shop in the first place and [redacted] for cheerleading in DMs.

It was another gorgeous September day in a string of gorgeous September days, and Will was whistling as he walked up the path to the barn. He nodded cheerfully at the camera operator setting up the dolly outside the entrance, high-fived the producer as he stepped through the door, and called out a cheerful _hello_ to Jay, who was unpacking his backpack over by his workstation. 

One of the craft services assistants was filling a carafe with fresh coffee, sending waves of rich fragrance through the barn. Will strode up to the table as soon as she was done and poured himself a brimming cup, stirring in cream with vigor. 

“We’ll teach you to take it black one of these days, Will.” Jay clapped Will on the back, grabbing a cup of his own. 

“Just because I’m not a bitter old man like you,” Will quipped. “I can still enjoy the sweeter things in life.”

“Hey now!” Jay said, mock-offended.

“I see you guys are already getting your day off to a lively start,” Steve said from behind them. He sidled between Jay and Will to fill a cup with hot water for tea, grabbed a muffin, and then snuck away, munching.

“Of course we are! Have you seen the weather outside?” Will stretched one arm above his head, languidly. “How can you not feel alive on a day like today?”

“I’ll feel more alive once I’ve had my tea,” Steve said, around a mouthful of muffin.

“What do we have on the docket today?” Will asked.

Jay pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “I’ve got more stuff to do on that antique rocking chair, Dom is in to work on his lamp, I think Kirsten’s still putting that vase together, and then we’ve got a new item coming in, a grandfather clock. Sounds like a project for you and Steve.”

Will felt his heart speed up. “That’s a big deal, a grandfather clock.”

“You’ll do great,” Jay said, clapping Will on the back again. “You’ve got the skills, my young apprentice.”

“Sure, sure, whatever,” Will said, hiding a smile. 

More people trickled in as Will sipped his coffee, team members heading to their workbenches and filming staff setting up equipment. Will sat down and brought out an antique lacquered jewelry box he was working on, and the day began.   
At eleven, Will was called over to the front table where the team members received new repairs. Steve was already there, hands tucked into the pockets of his clock-patterned vest. 

“What have you got for us today, Lou?” Steve asked the PA.

Lou consulted his clipboard. “A grandfather clock, being brought in by Ellen Hubbard. Belonged to her late husband, so lots of sentimental value—but I think it’s in pretty poor condition. You’ll have to come outside and help her carry it in, it’s pretty heavy and she can’t be younger than eighty.”

“Sounds good,” Steve said, rubbing his hands together. “Will, you ready for a challenge?”

“I was born ready,” Will said with a grin. 

The grandfather clock was in the back of a black van, swaddled in packing paper and old sheets. Will lifted one end of it gingerly, like it was alive, and pulled it out of the van until Steve could grab the other end. It was almost like a funeral procession, Will thought wryly as they walked into the barn. Except with any luck, they would be bringing something back to life. 

Ellen Hubbard followed them inside. She was tall and stately, her bright white hair swept up in an elaborate bun. Her left hand clutched the edges of the grey shawl she was wrapped in, while her right hand gripped a black cane with a gold topper. She faced Steve and Will with a look of mingled uncertainty and anticipation.

“So, Mrs. Hubbard,” Will said, making his voice as soothing as possible. “Can you tell us a little bit more about this grandfather clock?”

“It belonged to my late husband, Tom,” Ellen explained, taking a photo out of her handbag. “He bought it at a jumble sale for forty pounds in, oh, I don’t know...maybe 1973?”

“So it’s been with you for a long time.”

“Oh, yes. And my husband was very attached to it. He spent lots of time fixing it up and getting it back into tip-top condition. It was all beat up and didn’t look like much when he bought it, but he made it look grand! He was as proud of that as anything he ever did.”

Will smiled. He knew the feeling—turning something dusty and forgotten into something beautiful was a thrill unlike any other. He wished that he could have had a conversation with Mr. Hubbard about the clock.

Mrs. Hubbard sighed. “But when he died, five years ago…” her voice wavered for a moment. “The clock stopped. It was like he took it with him when he left. I tried all I could to get it working again, but he knew more about clocks than I did, and after a while I just didn’t have the heart to try anymore. So I put it in the attic. But when I was cleaning the attic this year, I found it again, and I thought…” Her voice wavered again.

“You thought it would be nice to have a reminder of him,” Steve prompted gently.

“Yes, yes. Having that clock working again...it would be like having a little part of him back with me.” Mrs. Hubbard rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a handkerchief, delicately blotting her eyes. 

“Well, Mrs. Hubbard, we’re going to do all we can to get it back in good working order,” Will said. “Now let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with.”

Will and Steven carefully unwrapped the clock, removing layers of paper and cloth one by one. The moment he saw it, Will understood why Tom Hubbard had been so attached to it. It was a beautiful piece of work, the solid craftsmanship shining through five years of dust and neglect. Its stint in the attic had reopened old cracks and faded the polish, but the cabinet had an understated elegance, adorned with carvings that looked simple but that Will knew were deceptively hard to execute. The scrollwork at the top was his favorite part; one piece had detached and was lying loose in the paper wrapping, but with everything there, it wouldn’t be hard to put it back together. 

Will pulled himself away from gazing at the clock. From the corner of his eye, he saw Steve doing the same thing. 

“It’s a beautiful clock, Mrs. Hubbard,” Steve said reverently. “It’s a little worse for the wear, but we like a challenge, don’t we, Will?”

“We certainly do,” Will said. “Your clock is in good hands, Mrs. Hubbard. We’ll do our best to get it back to the way you remember it when your husband was alive, all right?”

Mrs. Hubbard nodded, her eyes a little misty. “Thank you so much.”

“You can thank us when it’s done,” Steve said. “We’ll be in touch if we have any questions.”

Mrs. Hubbard said her goodbyes, and Steve and Will were left with the clock. It stared up at them, face faded and cobwebbed over, but still, Will imagined, full of life and spirit somewhere underneath. He shook his head. He was getting too attached. 

“This is going to be so much fun,” Steve said. “Shall we get started?”

****  
Steve didn’t have a lot of patience for false modesty. He was, quite frankly, great at what he did, and he wasn’t afraid to acknowledge it. Which made what was happening with Ellen Hubbard’s grandfather clock so strange.

First, it took him almost a full day to take it apart, although there was no rust on any of the components, and it looked exactly like every other grandfather clock he’d ever worked on. But surely, he thought, once it was taken apart, it would be easy enough to figure out what was wrong. 

When all the cogs and springs were finally laid out on his workbench, Steve polished them lovingly, buffing away nicks in the metal and removing layers of dust. It was a really well-constructed clock, the kind of thing designed to run for decades, and it surprised Steve that it had stopped. After he’d given each individual part its much-needed attention—making him feel, as it always did, like a spa director for little metal wheels—he started to slot them back into place. When he was done putting it all back together, Steve leaned on his hands for a moment and admired his work. It was a beautiful sight to him, the metal gleaming like new and interlocking perfectly. He could already hear the low bass chime of the clock, the steady tick that would emanate from the cabinet. He wound the clock up impatiently.

It wouldn’t run.

Steve gave it a few minutes. Sometimes clocks were slow to get going. When it still wouldn’t run, he blew gently on the mechanism. Maybe some dust had gotten into it during the assembly process, although he had been as meticulous as possible. He took out his magnifying eyepiece and peered down at the gears. Everything seemed perfectly in place. 

Steve wound it again. Nothing. 

An icy trickle of doubt seeped into Steve’s thoughts. Maybe he had put something together upside down? Maybe there was a piece missing he hadn’t known about? Carefully, forcing himself not to rush, he took the mechanism apart again. He pulled out a book from the stack of reference material that wobbled beneath his workbench, flipping to the page that showed the inner workings of most standard grandfather clocks. He compared the pieces spread out across his workbench with the pieces illustrated in the book. He stared at the illustrations for a long time, committing them to memory. Then he put everything back together, slowly, checking the diagram as he worked. It looked the same as it had before, although maybe there was something subtle he had missed the last time. 

Steve wound it up another time, holding his breath and closing his eyes. He waited as long as he could stand before opening his eyes again. The clock was inert, as lifeless as if it were still in pieces all over his table. It simply wouldn’t run. Steve let out a long, laborious sigh and went to get a cup of tea. Maybe it would clear his head. 

After a cup of tea, a stroll around the grounds, and a conversation with Dom about the wrought-iron lamp he was repairing, Steve felt like a whole new man. He sat back down at his workbench with determination, whistling a little as he wound the clock up a fourth time. Maybe it had just needed a little rest. 

The rest didn’t seem to have solved the problem, but Steve was still filled with good spirits from tea and fresh air. He cracked open another reference book on large clocks to compare it to the diagram in the other book. He pulled out his tablet and searched for the company that had originally made Ellen Hubbard’s clock. All the information he had seemed to indicate that he was doing everything right. 

He whispered to the clock, pleading with it to run. He ran a brush over the mechanism until there was no way even a faint speck of dust could be stuck to the surface. Nothing worked. Steve glanced around to make sure there were no cameras on him, then leaned back in his chair and let out a loud groan. Maybe he’d better go check on Will’s progress instead. 

Will was frowning at the clock cabinet with the same kind of infuriated concentration with which Steve had been staring at the mechanism. 

“How’s it going?” Steve asked, and Will started. 

“Well, uh, um…” Will lowered his voice. “To be honest, it’s not going great.” 

Steve’s heart sank. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m having a hell of a time with my varnish. It keeps drying up every time I want to use it. And on top of that, I can’t seem to fill these cracks. Every time I patch them up, they open back up again.”

“The mechanism is giving me trouble too,” Steve said. “I’ve got it put together the right way, and everything’s clean and repaired, but it won’t wind.” 

“Seriously? Is this clock cursed or something?” Will chuckled bitterly. “Is Tom Hubbard stopping us from beyond the grave because we’re meddling with his clock?”

The words clanged like a bell in Steve’s mind, bringing forward a half-forgotten old story. “Honestly, you might be onto something. I’m going to go do some research.” 

“Research?” Will asked, but Steve was already hurrying over to his workbench. He hauled out a whole stack of the oldest books he had. At the very bottom was a book he’d picked up in an antique shop years ago: _The Clockmaker’s Companion_. He’d gotten it more for the historical value than anything else—much of the information inside was hopelessly out of date, or something that could be found in his other books, and at least half the volume was devoted to legends and fables passed down by clockmakers. But one of those legends had something to do with clocks behaving badly after their owners’ deaths, if his memory was to be trusted. 

Steve flipped through _The Clockmaker’s Companion_ , scanning the pages for anything about death. At last, right in the middle of the book, he found it: _The Behavior of a Clock After the Death of its Owner, Proven by Two Curious Incidents_.

Will had gotten bored with trying to get his varnish to soften and had wandered back over to Steve’s workbench. “So, what’s the verdict? Is the clock cursed? Are _we_ cursed?” 

Steve waved an impatient hand. “Listen to this. _Upon the death of their owners, it has been reported that many clocks refused to chime again, would not wind, or fell into bits. When a clock is well-loved by its master or mistress, his or her death sends it into disrepair, and the clock mourns along with the rest of the bereaved._ ”

“You really think that’s what’s happening here?”

“The alternative is that you and I have suddenly become terrible at what we do. I think a mourning clock is a lot more realistic.” 

Will chuckled. “Always the modest one, eh, Steve?”

“It’s not immodest if it’s true,” Steve said. 

“Sure, sure,” Will said. “So. The clock is sad that Mr. Hubbard died.”

“That’s the best theory I’ve got.”

“What can we do about it?” Will leaned over Steve’s shoulder, staring down at _The Clockmakers’ Companion_. “Does your book have anything to say about that? I really don’t want to have to tell Mrs. Hubbard that we can’t fix her husband’s clock, she’s such a sweet lady.” 

Steve ran his finger down the page. “Hmm, let’s see...there’s a story where the dead man was haunting the clock, and causing it to topple over and strike even though it wasn’t wound. The family had to get a priest to exorcise him.”

“I don’t think the clock is haunted,” Will said. “At worst, it’s depressed.” 

Steve snorted. “So you think we should bring in a therapist?” He turned over another page. “Wait, there might be something here.”

“What does it say?”

“Well...basically, it sounds like this guy passed away suddenly from an illness, and he had been wishing for months to visit his family in Sussex. And when he died, his clock stopped, and they couldn’t wind it. And so they gave the clock to his family in Sussex as a memento, even though it wasn’t working, but as soon as they brought it in their house and wound it up, it ran perfectly again.”

“Wow,” Will said. “So the secret to restarting a stopped clock is to grant a dying man’s wish?”

“It seems like it. So you, my friend, are going to get Mrs. Hubbard on the phone and see if her late husband had any unfulfilled wishes.”

“Why me?”

“Old ladies love you,” Steve said. “You have that young man’s charm that reminds them of their grandchildren.”

“Aw, shut up, I’m in my thirties now,” Will complained, without much heat behind it. “Okay, okay. Tomorrow morning, I’ll get her on the phone.”

****  
Armed with a breakfast sandwich and a tall cup of coffee, Will walked into the producer’s office. Adrenaline was coursing through him—whether because he was nervous to have such a personal conversation with a woman he barely knew or because he was excited to solve the mystery of the stopped clock, he couldn’t tell.

“We’ve got Ellen Hubbard on the line for you,” Anna, the producer’s secretary, said.

“Thanks, Anna,” Will said. “Hello, Mrs. Hubbard?”

“Hello? Is this the nice young man who’s working on Tom’s clock? They said you wanted to speak to me.”

Will was glad Steve wasn’t there to say _I told you so._ “Yes, my name’s Will.”

“Is everything all right with the clock, Will?” 

Will took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, we’re having a little bit of trouble getting it to wind, and we thought—well, we thought maybe it missed your husband. Or maybe your husband doesn’t want to let go of the clock just yet.”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. Then Mrs. Hubbard said, as smoothly as if she were asking about a chipped cog, “Well, is there anything you can do about that?”

“Well, that depends. I know this might seem like a very personal question, Mrs. Hubbard, but did your husband have any last wishes? Anything he never got to do?”

There was another pause, long and thoughtful this time. “Well, he always wanted to visit Spain and see the art there. He was such a fan of Spanish art. And he’d been planning to build us a new dining room table—” her voice wavered. “But then he got a little too weak to do that, and he never got around to it.” 

“I see.”

“But other than that...well, on one of his last good days…” Mrs. Hubbard’s voice was thin and frail now, choked with tears.

“Take your time,” Will said gently.

Mrs. Hubbard took a deep, ragged breath. “He told me, ‘Ellen, I’ve been a very lucky man. I only wish I could have had more time with you, and said goodbye to Major.’ Major was his favorite horse, you see, and he didn’t have the strength to go out to the country and visit him.” Mrs. Hubbard took another deep breath. “Those were his only regrets. We lived a very, very good life.”

“It certainly sounds like it,” Will said, surprised to find his own voice cracking. “Well, thank you for telling me, Mrs. Hubbard. We’ll see if this can help us get your clock running again.” 

“Thank _you,_ Will.” Mrs. Hubbard cleared her throat. “I have a picture of Tom and myself from our wedding day that used to sit on his desk. If you think it might help the clock to start again, I can loan it to you.”

“It’s worth a try, I think. That’s very thoughtful of you, Mrs. Hubbard. Thanks for talking to me today.”

“It’s no trouble, young man. I’ll send over that picture for you. Best of luck with Tom’s clock.”

“I’ll do my best,” Will said, filling his voice with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. 

****  
Steve had sent Will off to his conversation with Mrs. Hubbard filled with hope. But as he listened to Will explain what Mrs. Hubbard had said, he could feel his heart sinking with every word.

“I hate to say it, but I don’t think this helps us,” Steve said, when Will had finished. “I mean, we can’t take a clock to Spain or bring it to visit a horse. That’s definitely not in the budget.”

Will sighed. “I know. These seem like impossible wishes to grant. Well, other than the dining room table, but who has time for that with everything else going on?”

Steve groaned, leaning back in his chair. “So, should we draw straws on which of us has to tell a sweet old lady that her late husband’s clock will never run again?” The words came out more harshly than he intended, bitterness rushing through him. It wasn’t Will’s fault, or his own fault, but it felt like more than an ordinary failure.

“Why all the long faces over here?” 

Steve startled, looking up to see Jay leaning over the workbench. 

“We’ve run into some major snags,” Will said. He filled Jay in, briefly, on the problems with Mrs. Hubbard’s clock and the solution that wasn’t really a solution.

Jay scratched his chin, like he was stroking an invisible beard. He was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “Does it have to be the exact wish itself?”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

“My granny, she used to have a big mouse problem in her house—I promise this is related,” Jay said, catching sight of Will and Steve’s skeptical faces. “And she loved to crochet. So she made a bunch of little crochet cats and put them up all over the house. And boom! The mice left! So what I’m saying is, do you need to take the clock to Spain, or can we make something that brings Spain to the clock? You see what I mean?”

Steve’s heart lifted just an inch. “I think I do.”

“You get a little horse, you get something that looks like it comes from Spain, you get a tiny dining room table—”

“Wait, hold on,” Will said. “Tiny dining room table is no problem, but I don’t think Steve and I can do the other ones.”

“Who says it has to be you and Steve?” Jay said, eyes gleaming. “You’ve got a whole team here. I think we can help you get what you need.”

“That’s brilliant!” Will exclaimed, grinning. “You’re a genius, Jay, thank you.”

“It’s the wisdom of my many years,” Jay said, mock-solemnly. 

Steve allowed himself a smile, too. For the first time since he failed to get the clock running, he felt like maybe this was going to work out after all.

****  
When Will walked into the barn the next morning, the first people he saw were Amanda and Julie, heads bent over something on their workbench. 

“What’s this teddy’s name, then?” Will asked.

Amanda looked up, a grin plastered on her face. “It’s even better than a teddy. Look!” She picked up a tiny object and held it out to Will. It was a little horse, he saw as he moved closer. Its mane was made of finely combed thread, and it stood up on tiny cloth legs that ended in smooth black hooves. Embroidered on the saddle was a name: MAJOR.

“For your clock,” Julie said, needle in one hand. “We’re almost done. Isn’t he beautiful?”

Will stroked the tiny horse’s head with one finger. “He’s perfect.”

And the day kept getting better. Lying on Will’s workbench was a manila envelope with his name on it. When he opened it, there was a black-and-white picture of a young couple in wedding clothes. The bride was grinning into the camera, and the groom was grinning at the bride. A note fluttered out of the envelope, written in spidery script: _Tom and I on our wedding day._

Will spent a long time staring at the picture, feelings welling up in his heart. “We’ll get you your clock back, don’t worry,” he whispered to Tom. He needed to hold up his end of the bargain, he realized eventually. He took out his pen and paper and began sketching out the design for a little dining room table. 

Making the miniature table was the most fun he’d had in ages. It reminded him of being a kid, putting together furniture for his sister’s dolls and spending hours drawing imaginary playhouses. He hummed to himself as he put the finishing touches on his sketch and walked over to the scrap pile where they kept odds and ends of wood. 

“You look cheerful today, Will,” Kirsten said as he passed her table. 

“Well, it’s been a rough go of it the past few days, but things are finally looking up.”

“Oh, yes, I heard all about the trouble you were having with your clock. It’s just terrible when a project doesn’t go your way, isn’t it? I felt so bad, I wanted to make you a little something.” She motioned him over to her workbench, where a half-finished tile lay next to a vibrantly colored palette. 

“What’s this?” Will asked.

“It’s a replica of a Talavera tile from 18th-century Spain. I took a look through some of my art books last night and I found one that I absolutely loved.” She pointed to a photograph showing an elaborate blue-and-yellow geometric design. “When I visited Seville many years ago, I saw tiles like this all over the place. Do you think this is the kind of Spanish art your clock’s owner would have enjoyed?” She looked at him earnestly.

For a few seconds, Will had trouble finding his voice. It was truly amazing, he thought, the way people on this show came together as a team when someone needed help. He was so fond of them all, every last one. “I think he would have loved it.” 

Knowing that everything else was taken care of made the work on the little table fly by even faster. Before Will knew it, it was lunchtime, and he had a miniature dining room table with a glossy top, elegantly turned legs, and two leaves that could be folded up or down on two little hinges. He wanted to make the full-sized version for his own home someday. He’d have to keep the sketch. 

By the end of the day, every little token for Tom Hubbard’s clock was complete. Before leaving, Will and Steve put the clock cabinet, the mechanism, and Will’s hardened varnish on a table, surrounded by the Spanish tile, the little horse, the wedding photo, and the miniature table. They walked away without a word, reluctant to disturb whatever might be happening. 

“We’ll see in the morning,” Steve said. 

“Fingers crossed,” Will said. He sent up a silent plea to Tom Hubbard. _If you’re watching, please let this be enough to satisfy you._

****  
Steve spent most of the night tossing and turning. He got out of bed at three in the morning to drink a glass of warm milk, but it barely helped. His stomach felt like an open pit, deep and dreadful. If the clock didn’t work tomorrow, he decided, he would change his name and move to France. He pressed his face into the pillow and hoped for more sleep. 

The morning finally arrived, and with it a little bit of peace. _I’ve dealt with all kinds of things in my career,_ Steve reminded himself as he got dressed. _One grandfather clock that won’t come out of mourning is not going to kill me._

Still, his heart sped up as he made the drive to the barn. By the time he pulled into the parking lot, it felt like it might hammer out of his chest. He could feel his legs quivering as he walked down the gravel path. Will was already at the barn, hovering by the door. 

“Are you ready?” Steve asked. 

“No,” Will said, making a harsh sound that was probably supposed to be a laugh. “But I guess we have to try it out anyway, huh?”

“Or we could change our names and move to France,” Steve said.

Will let out a much more genuine laugh. “Jay would track us down.”

“He probably would,” Steve acknowledged. “All right, shall we go and face the music?”  
They walked into the barn together, calling perfunctory hellos as they passed the rest of the team. As they approached the table where the clock was resting, Will’s eyes lit up.

“Hey, it looks like my varnish stayed liquid overnight,” he said. He picked up the container and gently shook it. “Yep, no hardening. That’s something.”

Steve took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “All right, moment of truth.” A small crowd had gathered around them, he dimly realized. _This had better work, you’ve got an audience,_ he admonished the clock in his head. With as much ceremony as he could muster, he leaned over and wound the clock. 

After an agonizing second of silence that seemed to last forever, the gears began to move. The gentle whirring sound of the mechanism working together, punctuated by the ticks of the second hand, was like music to Steve’s ears. The tension left him all at once, and he let out a joyous yelp. 

“Brilliant!” Will shouted, pumping his fist in the air. “We did it, Steve!”

There was applause all around them. Steve’s eyes prickled. 

“It wasn’t just us,” Steve said. “It was Amanda, and Julie, and Kirsten, and Jay, and…” His voice wavered. “It was Tom.” 

“To Tom,” Jay exclaimed from across the table, raising his cup of coffee like a glass of champagne. 

The rest of the repair was as straightforward as Steve had imagined it would be, back when Mrs. Hubbard first brought in the clock. He polished the face and hands until they shone and removed a thick layer of dust from the glass that covered the face. Over at his workbench, Will was filling cracks and reapplying varnish with ease, and even reattached the broken scrollwork to the top of the cabinet. It all needed to dry overnight, and Mrs. Hubbard was coming back for the clock the next morning, but with everything repaired, putting it back together would take very little time. 

Before they left for the night, they arranged the little cluster of tokens that represented Mr. Hubbard’s last wishes around the polished face and the drying cabinet. Steve couldn’t explain how it all worked, but after the events of this morning, he was no longer as skeptical as he had been—and he wasn’t inclined to take any chances. 

“Good night,” he whispered to the clock as he zipped up his coat and left the barn.

****  
Will stood to one side of the table near the entrance, heart pounding with anticipation. Steve stood on the other side. Between them was the clock, shrouded in a thick white dropcloth. On the other side of the table was Mrs. Hubbard, cane clutched in both hands, leaning towards them eagerly. 

“All right, Mrs. Hubbard,” Will said. “Are you ready to see your clock?”

“I’m more than ready,” she said firmly.

Will and Steve each grasped a corner of the dropcloth and flung it off the clock. It fluttered down to the table, revealing the polished cabinet and the gleaming face. 

Mrs. Hubbard let out a gasp. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Oh my goodness! It looks just like it did when Tom first fixed it up!”

“We’re so happy to hear you say that,” Steve said. “Do you want to hear it strike?”

“You figured it out? You boys are so clever. Yes, I’d love to hear it strike. I always loved the way it had a sort of deep voice, you know. Like my Tom himself.”

“Here we go,” Steve said, winding up the clock. He and Will had moved the hands to just before the hour, so that the clock would strike as soon as they wound it up. _An old trick of mine,_ Steve had said. The clock began to tick, a soothing rhythm, and the minute hand swung up towards the painted 12. Then a deep, resonant chime sounded out, ringing across the barn. Mrs. Hubbard’s eyes were full of tears.

“Oh my goodness,” she said when she could speak again. “Oh, this is just wonderful. I know my Tom would be so happy if he could hear it like this again.” 

“Let me show you something else,” Will said. He carefully opened the lower half of the cabinet. Nestled at the bottom were the little horse, the dining room table, the wedding picture, and the Spanish tile. “We did our best to make your husband’s wishes come true. And based on the way that clock sounds right now, I think it worked.”

Mrs. Hubbard dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “I think so too. I can’t thank you enough for bringing back this clock to the way I remember it. And I can’t wait to have it back in my home. It really is like a little piece of Tom, back with me once again.”

“It was our pleasure,” Will said, and meant it. Despite all the struggles, seeing this clock shiny and working again was more satisfying than many easier projects he’d taken on in the past. 

After Mrs. Hubbard left the barn, calling out her thanks as she departed, Will and Steve stood at the table as if frozen in place. 

“Well, we did it,” Steve said. “What are we supposed to do now?”

A half dozen things flashed through Will’s brain. The chair he was designing for a personal client, the rest of the things that were undoubtedly on the show’s list, the help he could be giving Jay with the antique rocking chair. 

But they’d worked so hard, and they’d earned a break. Will looked at his watch instead. “Is 11:30 too early for a pint?” 

Steve clapped him on the back. “I’d say we’ve earned it.”


End file.
